, in the news for the second time for another , is a bakery that the nation should be watching.
Owner Jack Phillips is in court again because he refused to bake a transgender cake for a trans woman. While most Americans can agree that all people should have equal rights and protections under the law, and no trans person should be discriminated against, the core issue isn’t whether or not Jack Phillips believes the right thing. The issue is whether an individual within his private business is committing discrimination by refusing service to someone.
While Jack Phillips’s beliefs may or may not represent readers’ beliefs, at issue is whether or not Jack has the right to hold those beliefs and deny service to an individual based on them. His latest lawsuit was born out of the first lawsuit, in which Jack refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding couple.
In Jack’s 2018 case, the Supreme Court ruled that Phillips did indeed have the right to refuse baking a gay wedding cake. The ruling in this case is expected to be no different.
“This lawsuit isn’t about discrimination, it’s about the freedom to disagree,” said Gates, Phillip’s attorney, according to Courthouse News Service.
For those confused about the issue, consider these businesses who leveraged their political weight in the interest of personal beliefs and are not considered discriminatory:
- Costco, Walmart, King Soopers, and thousands of other businesses who, while certain states didn’t require masks, required them, anyways…because their leadership teams or CEO’s believe in masks.
- MLB, which moved the Allstar game from Atlanta to Denver in protest of “racist Voter ID laws” because it believes in no identification for voters
- Facebook and Twitter, which banned President Trump for their beliefs that he poses a threat to national safety.
- Amazon, which banned Proud Boys gear because the leadership at Amazon believes Proud Boys are white supremacists.
- Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, who have disallowed election integrity talk, COVID-19 science that contradicts the narrative of Coronas as a pandemic.
- King Soopers, Boulder, which banned firearms from its store because management believes armed civilians are a threat.
Each of the above examples of “business owners” exercising their right to impose their beliefs on anyone who uses their services has been vastly tolerated because the examples all fit into a progressive box. But when the belief isn’t progressive, cancel culture takes effect, and people lose their jobs, their reputations, and their livelihoods. Jack’s religious-based beliefs about LGBTQIA+ don’t have to represent yours, but you could be Jack one day.
Masks overwhelmingly represent the paradigm at the crux of this issue of discrimination, as well. A large section of the population does not believe in masks, and it’s well known that most non mask-wearers . Denying service to such a large group could be construed as discrimination, but it’s not.
The Framers intended for the government to protect people from the government and from civilians. They wanted future generations to have the freedom to believe and act however they chose, as long as direct harm doesn’t come as a result of those actions. Jack hasn’t harmed anyone; people are free to patronize thousands of cake shops that believe anything other than what Jack believes. That’s the bottom line.
The slippery slope of free speech loss, which has been written about extensively here, is lost piece by piece. It’s not Jack’s beliefs we need to worry about, it’s all of our beliefs. We must return to a society that tolerates all. Without such tolerance, this nation is too large and too angry to continue in its current path.
The woman suing Jack could have just as easily shopped at a bakery that didn’t recently win a US Supreme Court Case on the subject. She went to Jack in an outright assault on his beliefs, like a maskless man running into a privately owned tire shop that requires masks while avoiding the maskless shop down the street and crying infringement on his Constitutional rights. Neither is the case; only the government can infringe. That’s why Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cake Shop matter.
This woman entered into Masterpiece Cake Shop in an attempt to use recent cancel culture to cancel Masterpiece, and it wasn’t necessary. Her rights were never infringed upon.
Masterpiece Cake Shop has launched an for supporters to purchase merchandise and baked goods for home consumption. Owner Jack Phillips realizes that not everyone needs a full cake but would like to support the shop as it’s targeted again. The shop is selling cookies, brownies, and merchandise to support itself during COVID-19 and a dampened wedding cake season yet again this year in 2021.
If you’d like to support Jack without ordering his baked goods, you can .
